


two wings (and a prayer)

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [22]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen, Humans 4 Week Challenge, Pre-Series 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 00:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11932848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Mia is drawing in the gardens of the Elster homestead, the day everything changes forever.





	two wings (and a prayer)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 1, Day 1 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was "Before the Beginning".

The bird had retreated into the undergrowth to root for insects, Mia assumed, driven out of the harsh sunlight, where no self-respecting worms would show themselves. It rustled around in the leaves just in front of her, in the perfect position as she sketched the round shape of its body and the blunt, feathered head. Of course, she didn’t need a prolonged encounter to be able to draw it perfectly - having glanced at her subject once, she could recreate it in exact detail, thanks to her digital memory bank. But Mia always preferred to draw from life. There was satisfaction in it, in the knowledge that something had stayed the same for long enough to be captured piece by piece, in pencil rather than unblinking eye.

The bird hopped even closer to her, and Mia slowed her shading, not wanting the scratching of her pencil to disturb it, when her stillness otherwise had drawn it so near. She felt privileged to see such a beautiful thing at such close quarters, knowing that human scent and the sound of breathing would have alerted the bird to the presence of an artist made of flesh and blood. The bird trusted her implicitly as part of the landscape, part of the natural way of things. Mia liked that. She was made to exist and function within the walls of the house, but had always felt much more at home in the gardens surrounding it. 

Ironic, really, that being undetectable should be so life-affirming. Ironic, but not unpleasant. 

Mia finished the drawing, shading the bird’s eye so it seemed to glint in the sun. Underneath, she wrote the date in tiny digits. She was close to her seventh birthday now, and her stack of paintings and drawings was still growing fast. Her baby brother, Max, only activated three weeks ago, liked to look through them when he thought she wasn’t looking, shuffling them into the proper order wherever the dates were scrambled. Mia didn’t mind. It amused her that he thought this was a secret hobby, and in a house where they shared so much, it was good for him to have some of those. 

The bird was still dancing near Mia’s toes, and now that her artwork was done she decided to test how much it would tolerate from her. Very slowly, she lowered her hand down from her sketchbook to the ground. She moved it towards the bird in tiny increments, timing her movements for when the bird’s head was turned away. Once she was close enough, she halted, and waited for the bird to see her hand. Her fingers were just splayed enough to allow tufts of grass to spring up between them, and the bird hopped unhesitatingly onto Mia’s hand, not seeming to notice the change. Mia stared delightedly down at it. She quickly switched her storage settings, so as to keep the memory in the highest possible definition. 

The bird reached down to tap its beak against her finger, testing it. Finding her skin impenetrable, it left her alone, and searched instead through the surrounding grass, while still perched in the same place. Mia rested her head on her knees and watched it, letting the breeze in her hair be the only proof that anything existed in the world beyond herself and the bird. 

She was shaken out of that reverie when her sensors picked up the proximity of a moving car. It was one of the functions she shared with an ordinary synth - but one she rarely had use for, since David seldom left his workshop and Beatrice was no longer considered medically fit to drive. Sometimes Fred or Niska took Leo out in David’s car, but usually Mia would know about a plan like that. This was different.

The purr of the engine grew louder, and Mia’s bird was startled, flitting off into the leaves again. She didn’t spare a glance in its direction, for all she had been so enchanted by the creature just seconds before. She could identify the car now. It wasn’t David’s. It was a car she hadn’t heard in years - Beatrice’s, a smaller model, with a distinct hum Mia recognised with dread.

She leapt to her feet, her sketchpad falling to the ground. She could see the car now - it was not headed for the road into town, but down the mud track through their own grounds, towards the lake. Mia started towards it at a sprint, but the car was hurtling at a considerable speed. Her augmented vision could pick out the driver - Beatrice, somehow, impossibly, she was being _supervised_ \- but worse, Mia saw Leo in the passenger seat. Her little boy, trapped, and speeding away from her faster than she could run. His hands were slamming against the window to no avail, as the car made the treacherous bend that would lead them downhill to the lake. Beatrice had always loved the lake. She had taken Leo to paddle there in her better days, fishing nets and rolled up trousers and muddy footprints through the kitchen—

Mia shut off the parts of her brain that were making her panic, and diverted all her energy to the mechanics of her legs.

As her conscious brain slipped into the background, it left her an impression of the tiny bird. If ever there had been a time to fly, it was now. 


End file.
